Shadow Walker (22 page)

Twenty-two

We had a hell of a time convincing Maya and Pamela to stay behind. I didn’t want volatile Maya anywhere near Gabrielle, because Gabrielle might simply kill her without blinking. Pamela wouldn’t have a much better chance.

I finally convinced Pamela that she needed to keep Maya safe, and Colby, also chafing because he couldn’t leave the house without Drake, agreed to keep an eye on both of them. All three of them watched us go, not happy, Pamela growling and swearing under her breath. But muscle wouldn’t help us against Gabrielle, only magic, and I wasn’t certain even Cassandra and I together would be strong enough.

We took the rental car Cassandra was using to Flat Mesa. Cassandra drove, and good thing too, because she drove calmly and kept the car on the road. I’d never have been able to.

Darker clouds were gathering to the north and east, dimming the light. A storm would give me some advantage, though it might not be enough.

Nash’s house looked quiet enough when we reached it. He’d cleared his driveway and front walk, the yard looking neat even draped in snow. We walked to the front door without bothering with stealth, found the door unlocked, and entered the house.

Nash was sitting on the bench of his exercise machine when we walked in. A handcuff enclosed one wrist; the second of the pair was locked around an upright support bar of the machine. Gabrielle sat on a bar stool at the breakfast bar, eating a sandwich and looking at one of Nash’s gun magazines.

“This looks nice,” she said, holding up a picture of an automatic rifle. “What does it do?”

“Guns drive me crazy,” I said, moving to her. I rested my arm on the breakfast bar and squarely met her gaze. “If you don’t fire them right, they kick, and the chemicals and metal interfere with magic.”

“Really?” Gabrielle turned a page, studied another weapon, and closed the magazine. “That’s interesting. You brought the witch. Good. I need you to do something for me.”

“Let Nash go, and we’ll discuss it.”

Gabrielle smiled. The silly look she’d affected around Nash during our previous encounters had vanished. She was hard and dangerous and no longer played. “Nash is mine. He’s my reward for all the trouble I’ve gone to.”

“Your reward will be me letting you live,” I said. “Maybe.”

I purposely didn’t let my magic build—actually, I beat it down as it rose with my panic. If Gabrielle thought me ready to fight, to kill, she might hurt Cassandra and Nash. Gabrielle couldn’t harm Nash magically, but she could blow up his house or shoot him with one of his many guns.

Cassandra whispered rapidly under her breath. She’d caught me off guard with a powerful binding spell last year, and she let fly one just as powerful at Gabrielle.

Gabrielle casually held up her hand. The binding spell hit whatever force Gabrielle shoved in front of it, and the spell rushed back toward Cassandra with blinding speed. Cassandra gasped and snapped off the spell the instant before its returning web could touch her.

Damn. Why couldn’t I do things like that?

“I didn’t ask you to bring the witch so she could bind me,” Gabrielle said in a hard voice. “I need her to do a locator spell, to find Vonda Wingate.”

Cassandra tucked back a wisp of hair that had escaped during her spell attempt. “Don’t you think I’ve been trying? I’ve been doing locator spells on her for two days. She’s shielding herself, and doing it very well.”

“Plus she has Mick’s magic to help her,” I said. “Mick knows amazing defensive spells.” Spells he’d showed to me. I wanted to die with grief.

“I know that Vonda has Mick,” Gabrielle snapped. “And she will pay—oh, she will pay for going behind my back like this.”

“I’m starting to not much care what you do to her.” I sounded so calm I amazed myself. “But I won’t let what you do hurt Mick.”

“Whatever. She enslaved him so she could use him to kill me. Well, guess what? Vonda’s not taking
me
out, I’m taking her out. She’s not getting her hands on my prize.”

We both looked at Nash, who scowled back. “Janet, get me out of these cuffs. Now.”

“Do it and I kill Cassandra,” Gabrielle said.

I folded my arms. “If you kill Cassandra, she won’t be able to do your locator spell.”

“Then I’ll find another witch,” Gabrielle said impatiently. “Cassandra’s here because she’s handy.”

My blood heated. “Is that how you see people? Handy for when you need something?”

“Don’t you?”

I didn’t answer, not liking the nasty feeling that she might be right.

No.
I shoved the thoughts aside. Gabrielle was trying to get under my skin.

“Let Nash go, and we’ll help you find Vonda,” I said. “I want to find her myself.”

Gabrielle grinned again, the smile wrinkling her nose. “We’ll get her, sis. Don’t you worry. If Cassandra does well, I’ll let her go. But Nash stays with me.”

“I won’t bargain with my friends’ lives. They go free, no matter what.”

Gabrielle’s eyes hardened. “I came to this county for one reason, and one reason only. That reason is Nash. Vonda is busy fucking things up, and I need to stop her, but sorry, Nash belongs to me.”

“You can’t bind Nash, Gabrielle. You can’t fight him. He can resist anything magical you do to him. You can’t win this one.”

Gabrielle gave me a patronizing look. “I can threaten his lover, can’t I? Nash will do anything to keep that Hispanic bitch safe. Anyway, it isn’t him I need but his seed. So I can give Mother the child she truly wants.”

Nash stopped rattling the handcuffs and stared, his gray eyes like chips of ice. “What the hell?”

“Gabrielle,” I said. “Listen to me. You don’t need to worry about pleasing our mother. She’s locked behind the vortex anyway. You can’t get to her—she’s no longer a part of us.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Janet. She’s not dead, and we certainly can get to her. You and I are powerful enough to open the vortex together, whenever we want. I’ll take Nash and our child to Mother, and this time, she won’t turn me away.”

In the heavy pause that followed, I heard the wind pick up outside, not with the might of a storm, but in a nice, steady, chill breeze.

“She turned you away?” I asked, forcing myself to sound unruffled. “I hadn’t realized you’d met her.”

Gabrielle nodded. “It was four years ago, in your little town of Magellan, at that stupid Ghost Train festival the wannabe Wiccans have at Christmas. I was thrilled to finally meet her, but you know what?” She stopped, the hurt in her eyes vast and troubling. “Mother didn’t want me. I hadn’t turned out right, she said, because what she needed was a daughter with a combination of Beneath and earth magics. That’s what it takes to open the vortexes. My father, she said, had only pretended he’d had shaman powers. He’d tricked her. And so I was useless to her.”

Four years ago. And four years ago, Gabrielle Massey’s parents died in an accident on a lonely highway. “Is that why you killed them?” I asked softly.

Gabrielle couldn’t meet my gaze. “I was so angry. I finally knew why I was different, why I had all this incredible power inside me, but Mother didn’t want me because the man whose seed I came from lied to her about being a shaman. Massey
lied
to her so he could have sex with her—while he was already married, by the way, to Anna, a very kind woman. I went home and told him what I knew. The stupid drunk. They were on that road because he was running away from me. He was terrified of me. I didn’t flip the car. When I stepped out in front them, he couldn’t stop, and they went off the side. I never touched them.”

The pain in Gabrielle’s eyes was worn, yet still fresh, as she relived a memory that had never lost its sharpness.

“I’d always hated him,” she said in a broken voice, “but I’m sorry about my mom. His wife, I mean. Anna couldn’t have children, and she raised me, even though she didn’t understand what I was.”

Cassandra and Nash watched us, their stillness filling the room. I couldn’t help picturing Gabrielle standing on the dark road, watching in horror while the car rolled down the mountainside, seeing the people who’d taken care of her since babyhood suddenly wiped from her life.

“Gabrielle,” I said, my voice firm. “You don’t want to be with our mother. She’s evil, and I mean evil in the purest sense of the word. She has no concept of anything but coldness. She won’t accept you, and she won’t love you, no matter what you do, no matter who you bring her.”

“You don’t get it, Janet.” Gabrielle sneered at me. “I don’t want to be
loved
. I want what she offered you. Mother was ready to give you all the power in the world, to let you have anything you wanted, to have you live by her side as a goddess. And you said no.” Gabrielle got up off the stool. “You said no, you stupid bitch, and you sealed her in. You took what I wanted, what should have been
mine
, and you threw it away.”

White power crackled in Gabrielle’s hands. Gods, I wanted to knock her over the head. She needed a good talking-to about evil and the ways of hell-goddesses.
After
I got my friends free of her.

“What she offered me was a sham,” I said. “Mother didn’t want me ruling by her side; she wanted to use me to give her Nash.”

Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “So? Haven’t you learned, Janet, that in this life, you have to take what you can get? No one gives you anything. Nothing is free. If the price of the power that should be yours is capturing a handsome sheriff, good enough for me.”

I knew one thing—though I felt somewhat sorry for Gabrielle, that didn’t mean I’d hand her Nash or help her open the damn vortexes. Gabrielle might want to confront our mother to get over her abandonment issues, but I couldn’t risk the fate of the entire planet so Gabrielle could play Mom-likes-me-best.

“Tell you what,” I said. “We’ll help you find Vonda. You help me get Mick free. Then you can do what you want to Vonda. That’s the only bargain I’m making right now.”

“Who cares about Mick? I need to stop Vonda. She’s snared herself a dragon so she can kill me. I have to find her and kill her first.”

“Why should she want to kill you? What did you do to her?”

Gabrielle heaved an aggrieved sigh. “I didn’t do anything to her. My mistake picking a witch with delusions of grandeur. She’ll use Mick to eliminate me and go after what she wants.”

“Which is what?”

“Hell if I know. When we find her, we can ask her.”

“Only if you let Nash go,” I said doggedly.

Gabrielle hopped back onto the stool. “Sorry, sis. I’ll spare you and your precious friends, but Nash is mine.”

“No, bitch,” Maya’s voice came from the front door. “Nash is
mine
.”

Nash rose as far as he could from the bench, yanking at the handcuffs. “Maya, get the hell out of here!”

Maya had a gun in her hands, which I recognized as the semiautomatic with which she’d once tried to shoot me. I didn’t pause to puzzle over how Maya had gotten away from Pamela, because Pamela herself was coming up the driveway.

“Maya, I’ve got this,” I said. “Turn around and get out of here, and take Pamela with you.”

Maya fired. She had a damn good aim. The bullet went straight for Gabrielle, and would have slammed through her chest if Gabrielle hadn’t thrown up a shield of magic to deflect it.

The bullet stopped, stuck in the bubble of Beneath magic as though suspended in resin. Gabrielle studied the bullet curiously, then moved her gaze to Maya.

“Good shot,
chica
.” Gabrielle’s hand came up, and her Beneath magic sailed, clear and true, toward Maya.

I leapt the short distance to Maya and tackled her. We both went down, and Gabrielle’s magic blasted out the frontdoor frame, making Pamela dive aside. A tail of the Beneath magic caught me on the arm, and I grunted in pain. My own Beneath magic rose in me like fury, ready to strike back.

I reached for the wind instead. The approaching storm was still weak, but I found wind and falling snow and streamed them through my hands. I knew, based on what we’d done out on the highway, that if I started a Beneath magic fight with my little sister, we’d destroy Nash’s house and half the neighborhood.

Gabrielle’s defenses wavered under my Stormwalker magic, and I saw her realize that I wasn’t as weak as she’d thought. Furious at my attack, she wound up into a Beneath magic rage.

“No!” I shouted. “We can’t do this here.”

Cassandra made it to Nash’s side. I smelled a bite of witch magic as she opened the handcuffs. Nash was up, making for Gabrielle. Pamela, eyes wolf white, was right behind him.

“Nash, no!” I yelled. “Stop! We all have to stop.”

“I want her out of my house.” Nash kept moving fearlessly toward Gabrielle, ready to pick her up and bodily throw her out.

I grabbed him. “You can bounce her all the way out of Hopi County later, but as much as I hate to admit it, I need her to help me with Mick.”

“Why?” Maya asked. She pushed hair out of her face and climbed to her feet, still holding the gun. “She said she didn’t care if Mick died. I heard her.”

“I’m going to make damn sure Mick doesn’t die. But Vonda is a powerful witch with a dragon, and Gabrielle can keep her busy while I do what I need to do.”

“I told you, Janet, I’m going to kill Vonda,” Gabrielle said. “You can’t stop me.”

“Fine, as long as you wait until Mick is free. Maya, go home. Pamela, take her. Neither of you can help. Cassandra, start that locator spell.” I shoved Nash’s magazines to the floor, clearing a space on the counter.

Maya’s dark eyes snapped in rage. “I’m not going anywhere. Not while this bitch can’t keep her hands off my boyfriend.”

Gabrielle smiled at her. “I’ll make him happier than you ever can, sweetie. When Nash gives me his baby, I’ll make him a god.”

Maya sighted down the pistol at Gabrielle. “The only one having Nash’s baby is me.”

I saw Nash have an uh-oh-did-I-forget-the-condom moment, before he realized Maya was speaking metaphorically. “Maya, for God’s sake, do what Janet says,” he growled.

“I refuse to step meekly aside while this person tries to rape you. She can’t do it if I have a gun pointed at her brain.”